Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
First off, allow me to lead this interview off by saying that the definitive interview with Patton Oswalt on his magnificently understated performance in last year's BIG FAN was done by our own Mr. Beaks. Read that interview here. Not wanting to cover the same territory, I decided to ask a few questions about BIG FAN, which is being released this week (January 12) on DVD, and also get a lay of the Oswalt-land, in terms of what seems like an endless stream of TV and movie acting roles.
Just in the last year, I can recall seeing (or hearing) him pop up in OBSERVE AND REPORT, THE INFORMANT!, "Dollhouse," "The United States of Tara," "The Venture Brothers," "Bored To Death," "Community," "The Flight of the Conchords," and "Reno 911!" And let's not forget that he also managed to squeeze out a new CD/DVD of his stand-up work, "My Weakness Is Strong." And what I didn't realize until I began sifting through the copious extras on the FUNNY PEOPLE DVD is that Oswalt was one of a handful of comics who supplied stand-up jokes for the likes of Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen in that film. Above all other things in 2009, he and his wife also had a baby, an event that has transformed Oswalt's way of living and watching movies (we'll get to that in the interview).
Movies have always been an important part of Oswalt's way of life and his comedy, so much so that he spent a couple of years writing undercover for AICN as the hormonally challenged Neill Cumpston, an entity loaded with adolescent energy and a taste for all things action oriented. A man among sheep, Cumpston was such a force that I didn't even want my stories posted near his for fear no one would read my puny attempts at journalism and criticism. I couldn't compete with reviews that featured classic analysis like "Pants, meet shit." I miss Neill...
Oswalt was in the Chicago area over the Christmas holidays for multiple reasons, including spending time with family and headlining a benefit night of stand-up at the Lakeshore Theater, which has become one of the city's greatest venue for new and established comedians. The event took place the night after Christmas Day, and Patton was kind enough to invite me to be his guest for the evening, which featured two great warm-up acts and a two-hour set by Oswalt of mostly newer (post-"My Weakness Is Strong") material. But before he cut loose with one of the best comedy shows I've ever seen, we had a fun breakfast interview at a fantastic restaurant in his hotel.
I'd met Oswalt twice before in the last 10 months or so. The first time, I spotted him at a midnight screening of ONG BAK 2 at SXSW in March 2009. Since we were technically AICN co-workers at one point in the not-to-distant past, I went up and said Hi. I'd been hearing great things out of Sundance about his dramatic turn in BIG FAN, and asked him to consider bringing the film to Chicago for a special screening. We did get to do a free ACIN screening of BIG FAN before its release in Chicago last October, but without Patton on hand. But then I was informed that on the film's opening day at the Music Box Theatre, both Patton and BIG FAN writer-director Robert Siegel would be on hand in Chicago for a Q&A. Moderating that Q&A is one of the greatest, most enjoyable moments I've been lucky enough to have doing this job, and the icing on the cake is that the Q&A will be one of the bonus features on the BIG FAN DVD.
Oh, and I just noticed Oswalt is playing in Milwaukee on the day after my birthday in February. I may have to take a road trip…
And so leaving his wife and newborn daughter up in his hotel room, Oswalt joined me for a breakfast that was delicious with both food and conversation about BIG FAN, and many other fun things. And watch the site carefully later today for a chance to win one of 10 copies of BIG FAN on DVD. Enjoy…
Capone: The other day, I was watching some of the extras on the FUNNY PEOPLE DVD, and not only is some of your standup is featured on there, but that Judd Apatow said you helped write some of the jokes for a couple of the characters.
Patton Oswalt: Yeah, they had a bunch of us--me and Brian Posehn and David Feldman and oh God, who else? Now I’m blanking. A lot of other comedians and I apologize that I forgot who was in the room ay the time, but yeah we would generate material for Seth Rogen’s character and for Adam Sandler’s character. It was actually kind of interesting, too, because I don’t usually sit down and write jokes, so to have an idea of a character and especially of a comedian at a certain point in their career and you remember, like you kind of go back in your head, “Oh yeah, I remember how I used to go about this and how dumb I was.” So you would take things from that point of view and that was actually freeing, and we ended up writing a lot of stuff. One of the ones, I think Adam Sandler’s character said, I did that joke about the girl that was "the one that got away, which is what a serial killer says.”
Capone: That’s right.
PO: That one was mine.
Capone: They used that joke a lot in the trailer. It was in all of the trailers.
PO: Yeah and then there was another run for Seth that I think I had the nugget, and then Brian added to it and I’m blanking, I cannot remember what it was. But I remember when I saw it in the movie I went, “Oh yeah. I think I started with that nugget and then he fed into it."
Capone: I didn't know all of that stand-up was even on the DVD, with you and all those other people.
PO: Yeah, yeah. They did a big concert at The Orpheum Theatre [in Los Angeles] down town, which is in the movie as when he’s up north, so yeah that was really fun. It was a great show. Everybody was on that.
Capone: You were talking before how there's an actual award push for your role in BIG FAN. Has your approach to taking and accepting and pursuing acting roles changed much in the last couple of years, especially since you made BIG FAN, which is clearly a turning point?
PO: My approach to acting roles… I think, you can always tell the actors or actresses who kind of ruin their careers when they start taking the roles with an Oscar in mind. Do you know what I mean? That’s just as poisonous to a career as taking roles where someone asks, “What’s the money on this? This will be big? Okay good, I’ll take this.” With me--and it probably helps that I’m such a film buff--my only genre is “good, what's good.” That also goes beyond movies. It’s movies, TV, voiceover, so if I get to work with someone like a Robert Siegel or I almost got to work with the Coen Brothers last year, yeah, of course oh my God I want to do that, because I get to work with people that I really respect and like. Also if I get to do something that’s really fun and weird, like maybe it’s a first-time director and they are really taking a risk, or it’s a project that’s probably going to be a fiasco, but it will be a really fun fiasco for me to do.
So it’s that whole Michael Caine school of filmmaking of like “I get to be in Barbados? Why not.” “Really, because it’s about flying shrews that are possessed by demons.” “Yes, but have you seen the beaches? They're delightful!” I had a friend who was doing PIRANHA 3D and I was talking to him when he was on the set and I got so jealous. I was as jealous of him as I am of friends of mine that are going in to do actual prestige projects, because he’s like down in Lake Havasu [Arizona,] with Ving Rhames and Elisabeth Shue and a porn star [Riley Steele] and they were auditioning amputees at the local Wal-Mart for some of the gore effects. It was like “This sounds fantastic!”
If it’s just going to be some middle-of-the-road, or not even middle of the road, but “Yeah, it’s going to be this romantic comedy with these stars…” I’ll got to imdb and look at the writers or directors and go, “Oh yeah, this will be okay, but it probably wont be fun to do and it won’t be fun to watch.” Right now, while I have some freedom and I’m being offered some interesting projects, I’ll use that freedom as long as I can. But you know getting to do "Dollhouse" with Joss Whedon and getting to do "Caprica," where I got to improvise a lot of my dialogue.
Capone: Yeah, we talked about that.
PO: With writers as good as Ronald D. Moore and David Eick to go, "You can riff a little bit," Jesus that means a lot to me. So yeah my only genre is “good.” “What’s going to be interesting to me?” Also, I think it helps--and I don’t want to sound snotty--but if there are lean times, I can go do standup until something interesting comes along. I also think it’s really detrimental to a career to go “Okay, I got this much exposure and made this level of money this year, so I’ve got to make more the next.” Do you know what I mean? If you look at it on a quality arc and also an arc of fun and interest to you, I think that will last a lot longer I think.
Capone: It had to be kind of cool to work with Soderbergh.
PO: Oh Jesus, yeah!
Capone: I just rewatched THE INFORMANT!, because it’s definitely a Top 10 candidate for me.
PO: That was really fun. We went out to Decatur, [Ill.,] and we went back to L.A., and I got to watch him work on location and it was all him and I think the crew was like two guys. You know what’s kind of interesting about working with Soderbergh? I know that people say “auteur” about Soderbergh, but I actually think he’s anti-auteur in that he is just always doing movies. He reminded me of what I would imagine it would be like to work with the old Hollywood studio pros, like a Michael Curtiz. Those guys would do four movies a year, because they could literally walk on a set and go, “Oh yeah. We’ll use this light. This will be the frame. We will do a couple of takes and boom, moving on.” He’s not this angsty, “Oh God what’s the…?” He is just such a pro now, because he is constantly making movies. I think people forget how many movies this guy makes.
Capone: In a year.
PO: In a year! I think he wants to get to that point where real art comes out of just old pros that can just literally look in a room for two seconds and go “Yeah, we’ll do it like this! I’ve done this a million times, and here’s where the art is going to come.”
Capone: I just love how with every movie, it’s got a different look at feel. The things he put out in the last year--CHE, GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, and THE INFORMANT!--are three completely different looking films and obviously there’s something there.
PO: It’s clear that he’s a guy that will want to work with every lens, every style, so he just knows everything from doing it and then just come in and do it. That guy and the movies that are coming down the pike from him are just going to be amazing.
Capone: I got to interview him about a year ago for CHE, and the first thing I wanted to know about, because he has been making this Spalding Gray documentary for like the last couple of years.
PO: Oh my goodness.
Capone: He's been piecing it together because they were friends, because he directed one of his monologue movies and I just said, “I’ve got to ask you about this.” I think he said he’s trying to premiere it at or around Sundance. I hope that happens, because I can’t wait to see that thing. And it’s going to be narrated by Spalding Gray, because he’s got this unfinished monologue that’s going to act as the backbone to the piece.
PO: Of the portrait of his life? God, that’s amazing.
Capone: And then he’s got a CLEOPATRA musical and an action film. The guy is a machine. Soderbergh told me he’s more about the process than about the finished film. He likes going through the process of getting it made, and is less interested in seeing it once it’s done.
PO: Yeah, because the more he does that, the easier it will be to do. He wants that autonomy that comes from facing every type of experience, like “I know what this is like.” I always go back to it being like a master chef, “I’ve spent years making omelets and cooking rice, okay I know how to do this. I’ve done this a million times.”
Capone: To get back to the acting for a bit, the TV stuff is stuff I have been seeing a lot more of with the second "Dollhouse" appearance. When you were here before, you had either just shot it or you were just about to shoot it, because you mention it. You said, “I’m going to be back on again.”
PO: That’s right yes, I was just about to go and shoot it. I think that, especially these last few years of TV have been as good as films, because of the desperation of the networks, because their ratings are going down the shitter. They are letting these creators do more overall arcs. They are becoming more like these giant, mega-movies and a lot of the comedies have gotten good too. I’ve been really lucky. I’ve gotten to do some really good TV work. I did "Bored To Death" and "Community," and they are going to bring me back to "Bored To Death."
Capone: Oh good.
PO: They brought me back on "Dollhouse" and then a lot of animated work like "Venture Brothers." I just did another pilot for those guys, they just shot and I played a character in that. Then there’s the "Tim and Eric" stuff, and I’m on "Sarah Silverman" coming up, so yeah there’s a lot of like…"Flight of the Conchords." They are just really fun acting opportunities.
Capone: With "Caprica," what are you doing on that?
PO: I play a talk show host names Baxter Sarno, and what I love bout "Caprica" is I think so much science fiction has that kind of lofty “This is a grand epic,” but in these shows and even more so in "Caprica," they are like… One part of becoming an advance civilization and having a surplus of leisure is you have disposable entertainment, and people start getting wired up into gossip and weird snarkiness, and the fact that we live in this post-industrial society with all of these miracle drugs. You literally have a device in your pocket that has access to more information than any library has ever held in the history of mankind. That’s where we are living now, so of course we are going to have all of this snark and just people making lists of things and “The 17 goofiest blah blah…” We have time to do it, you know? "Caprica" is kind of a sort of paradise world that is now running into some trouble, and I’m a minor figure, but you also realize that these kind of people have sway and eventually in the series, a couple of characters have to go on my show. There was a time like with the Howard Stern Show where everyone was like “I’ll sort of trust them, but I'll trust them more when I see them go on Howard Stern and face that stuff.” You know what I mean? That’s kind of what he is.
Capone: I grew up in D.C., so I've been listening to Howard Stern since I was in junior high.
PO: Yeah, me too. WWDC, yeah.
Capone: That’s right. The DC-101 era.
PO: With Earth Dog.
Capone: Earth Dog, that was Fred. I remember that.
PO: That's right. “50 Ways to Rank Your Mother.” [Stern's first album]
Capone: I have that on vinyl.
PO: Yep, and he's on the cover, with the whip?
Capone: Oh yeah.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: It did come out on CD, but it was called something else.
PO: It did?
Capone: Yeah and I remember picking it up in a store and it was in the comedy section, and I’m like “Okay, that’s the cover of '50 Ways to Rank Your Mother,' but this is not what it was called…” It had a dirty title or something [the new title was "Unclean Beaver."]
PO: Wow, that’s amazing.
Capone: I've got that somewhere.
PO: So yeah, it was just fun. I’m apparently interspersed throughout the series, but we filmed a lot of my stuff in a few days, but it’s all snarky monologue stuff.
Capone: So who of the regular cast members do you actually get to do scenes with?
PO: I don’t know if I should say, because it’s sort of done suspensefully. I will say that as much as I improved, other actors also improved really amazing stuff, including there’s a key line that I or the writers did not come up with. An actor was like “What if I said this?” and they were like “That’s the one!” It’s really cool.
Capone: I can’t imagine not being excited about anything in the "Battlestar Galactica" world.
PO: At one point in between scenes, somebody was unpacking like an original Cylon out of a box. I was looking at it like “Holy shit! It's a cylon!”
Capone: Do you still have to audition for people?
PO: Yeah. Sometimes I’ve got to. I’m not at that level yet where they are going to just give me parts. I’ve been offered a few things, like I was offered "Flight of the Conchords." The same with "Sarah Silverman," because I’m friends with her, and a lot of voice over stuff I tend to get offered, but yeah I had to audition for the Coen Brothers. I had to audition for Soderbergh.
Capone: With the Coen Brothers, was that…?
PO: SERIOUS MAN.
Capone: What part were you auditioning for?
PO: I was auditioning for the Richard Kind role, which I’m so happy he got. He was amazing. I ran into Richard Kind, and he was like “They told me that it came down between you and me,” and I was like “They made the flat-out right decision,” because, God, everyone in that movie is amazing. In fact when I was at the Gotham Awards and I met the actor who played Sy Ableman and made him give me a hug and take a picture of us. I was like “I’m going to be a total fanboy, I want a picture of you hugging me,” because my wife and I just loved that movie. That’s one of those movies, like MIDNIGHT RUN and THE PRICESS BRIDE, where you are like, “This is a perfectly cast movie. Whoever cast this movie should get an Academy Award. This is amazing.” It really does come down to the casting sometimes, and this it’s fucking flawless.
Capone: Now Robert [Siegel] though asked you to be in BIG FAN. That wasn’t an audition, was it?
PO: Nope. He gave me the script, and I read it and he said “Would you like to do it?” I was like “Yep.”
Capone: It’s a lead role where you don’t have to audition.
PO: I know! It’s like “what?” This is terrible advice for young actors, “Just hang around, and eventually someone will give you a movie.” I don’t know how that came about and it’s the same thing with RATATOUILLE with me, like “How the fuck did that happen?” When he told me the process, I was like “Jesus, you heard me on the radio one night when you were driving, just by chance?”
Capone: Not enough good things have been said about Pixar over the years, but they do have--I think it might be their secret weapon--that they don’t care about stunt casting. They could not care less about it and they are the only ones still. Everyone else thinks they need a name above the title.
PO: There’s no reason for Brad [Bird] to have heard about me, although it is kind of funny… I had the first instance this year in my 22-year career of me saying “I can’t do this audition. Not that this is wrong or that they don’t know who the fuck I am?” But there was this animation company, they’re smaller and they wanted me to come out to like Venice Beach, which couldn’t be further from my home. “We’re doing this animation thing, and we are thinking about using Patton, but we aren’t doing like goofy character voices, we want everyone talking in their regular voice. You’ve got to come out here…” [My manager] was like “If you would like to hear his regular voice, you may rent RATATOUILLE, any one of his four specials, any one of his three albums. That’s his regular voice.” They were like “Yeah, but does he understand that voiceover is a whole different animal?” We are like, “We just told you he’s the lead voice in RATATOUILLE.” Then they were saying stuff like, "But we are doing radical, beyond the edge… “Oh, then you can listen to him on 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' or 'The Venture Brothers'" "No, we are not doing it." It was this weird, and it was the first time where both my managers and me said "Don't do this." Most voiceover work is with them hearing my voice and going “yes” or “no.” They were acting like “He’s got to come out here and he’s got to go through the wringer.” “No, I don’t.” Then I actually felt guilty for a day, like “Am I being a dick?” I called other voiceover actor friends, and they were like “No, those guys sound crazy.” No one auditions voiceover people like that. “You’ve got to come out here and find out what it’s all about.” “Is it talking into a microphone? [Both Laugh] Then I’m going to bet that I know what it’s all about.”
Capone: How did the whole thing at Comic Con come together with you moderating the Disney panels?
PO: They asked me. They called me up and brought me in for two Saturdays before the Con to run through the clips and figure out what I was going to ask people, and I thought it was really really fun. I felt a little bad for the TRON people, just because they had to follow Johnny Depp walking on. It was just kind of a surprise. And that all happened literally as it was happening, so if I would have known it was going to happen, I would have suggested to do all of the panels and then have Johnny Depp come out, just to be fair to all of the folks. But Jeff Bridges and everyone in the TRON movie were very game and they were still so enthusiastic about it and it’s just that all of the air was out of the room at that point. It was also kind of interesting to see a lot of the--I don’t know how to put it. With fans of things, the people that tend to go to the mic are the ones that are very, very deeply and emotionally committed, so they are very much in their head, and they have their question and the people that are in line behind them, they don’t listen to anything and so Zemeckis having to listen to the same questions over and over. He literally got three or four variations of “Jim Carrey is a comedian and this is a serious thing, do you think that…” To break it up, I said “Any plans to do like a ROGER RABBIT sequel” and you could see him kind of go “Yes! If we do it, we will not do 3D, we will keep it to 2D.” I was like “That’s really interesting. Next question.” “If you do a ROGER RABBIT…” That was all that was…
Capone: You broke the momentum of monotony. I don’t think I caught all of the live-action one, but I definitely caught all of the animation one. I remember when they showed us that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST footage in 3D, it was really funny when you said, “I already know which scene is going to be the best scene in 3D” and then you asked the directors what they thought the best 3D scene would be and you were like “No!” every time they answered.
PO: Because when they were showing that footage, and this wasn’t just me, everyone in the room was like, “Oh that’s right, this was a fucking great movie!” It has the best songs where you can totally sing along, action, really catchy stuff, and the scene itself… You could see the animators hadn’t thought of it either, because it is just guys talking in a pub and singing, but all of the steins flipping out and they throw people around. That would be gorgeous in 3D and, by the way, not that I had any amazing insight, but once they showed me the footage, I started going through my head of all of the songs I love in that movie and the Gaston song, which I could literally sing right here, I was like “That’d be a great 3D thing.” When I said it on stage, you could see people going “Oh, that’s right.”
What felt most gratifying about that was, they did BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which everyone loves, and then they did that great Ken documentary [from TOY STORY 3], and I never played with Barbie or Ken, but when he was doing this [gestures to his face as if he's adjusting sunglasses], and everyone was like "Awwwww!" I was like “Why are they all reacting.” They said apparently that was a classic problem with the Ken dolls, the sunglasses would not stay on his face, and I was like “Oh wow, I didn’t know that.” And then THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG stuff, but then when they got to PONYO, which that is the simplest, just drawings animated and that blew everyone away. It was amazing. I bet if they would have shown that during the 3D panel as even a break, it still would have blown people away. That was unbelievable. It’s drawing. His drawings are like nowhere near even realism. They don’t even look like…they're just he basic representation of the human form, yet you understand all the emotion, everything that’s going on.
Capone: I got to interview Miyazaki right after that panel.
PO: You did? They said I could go up and say “Hi” to him, and I like froze up; I bolted and basically ran away, and then later on he signed a PONYO figure to me and I have it on my shelf. I was like," Oh God, Ponyo!"
Capone: It was fun. John Lasseter has always been like a dream interview for me and he was just floating around upstairs in that balcony area. He was being interviewed, but mostly he was just floating around and hanging around Miyazaki. So Miyazaki and I had this scheduled interview and he was wonderful, but you can only get so much in with 20 minutes and an interpreter.
PO: Who else did you get to talk to?
Capone: Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, Chan-Wook Park…
PO: No shit?
Capone: Yeah, because he had THIRST there.
PO: Isn’t it amazing, it seems to me that every time there’s some big mainstream, not-so-great vampire movie out, there’s always like a smaller almost rebuke? Like when THE LOST BOYS came out, which isn’t necessarily a horrible movie, but that same year NEAR DARK came out, I think. And then when INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE [1994] was out, I think you had like NADJA [1994] and THE ADDICTION [1995] was out. THE ADDICTION is so amazing. I love the idea or fact that she’s turned into a vampire makes her a better philosophy student, like she nails her thesis, because she’s now looking at the world as predator and prey. There’s this great scene where she’s like doing her master’s thesis and she’s giving her master speech or something and she has it’s almost like an attack. Then last year with the first TWILIGHT movie you had LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and this year you had THIRST.
Capone: There’s a movie out soon that I think is the perfect antidote for NEW MOON, and I would be curious to know what you think of it, called DAYBREAKERS with Ethan Hawke.
PO: I saw those posters.
Capone: It is really good.
PO: Oh, really?
Capone: They’ve completely stripped out the gothic silliness and these guys who had no money--I think they had less money than DISTRICT 9 had--to make this beautiful film about a world not that far in the future where everyone is a vampire, expect for this very small sliver of humanity that is our blood supply that’s about to run out. You start thinking “What would happen in a world full of vampires where the blood is about to run out?”
PO: What an amazing analogy. Is there like an Al Gore style vampire that’s like “Listen people…”
Capone: Our basic human greed and our desire to tap out all of our natural resources does not end just because we all become vampires. It’s more science fiction than vampire.
PO: Nice, genius. I’ve got to check that out.
Capone: Back to BIG FAN for one minute, I was really curious about the poster with you in the face point with that vacant, slightly scary look in your eye. It's the sad clown/possible psycho thing. Whose idea was that?
PO: That was Robert's idea. We shot that on a roof in Brooklyn in the freezing cold, and that face… Yeah, what I like about it is, he looks so hollowed out that the paint is the personality this guy has left, you know? And he's almost putting it up like an offering, "See, I matter, right?" It look like the face is asking a question, and the answer is just a flat "No." You know what I mean? It can be interpreted many way, but the original tag line under my face, which would have been perfect, was "A story of unrequited love." (Groans) I don't know why they took that off.
[Oswalt was actually called away at this point, but he insisted that I send him any unasked questions via email. What follows are his responses. He insists he much funnier in print, but after seeing him perform that night, I might have to argue with that.]
Capone: Related to BIG FAN, was it difficult not being able to play to your strengths as a comic actor to play this part?
PO: It was, at first. My instinct was to try to add a little ironic, funny wrinkle to things, to dialogue, either at the end or hidden somewhere. I do it without thinking. But then I ended up being grateful for realizing I had so much more to learn about what I do, and had to be more and more present in each scene. I had to tell myself, “This guy doesn’t have the vocabulary or personality or self-awareness to be that way.” And it ended up being freeing in a profound way.
Capone: I just read that you're making your Broadway debut in a revival of Terrence McNally's "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." How did that come about, and how do you feel about the prospects of performing to crowds night after night who may not know who you are, or just performing to theater crowds in general?
PO: I’m very nervous, but also excited, for similar reasons I talked about in the last question--I have never done a play and have zero idea what it involves. I’m entering a situation where I’m starting at zero, and have to be open to whatever comes along. I’d forgotten how calcified I’d gotten in my other creative pursuits--acting, writing and especially stand-up. I’m hoping this will be one of those useful upheavals.
Capone: At some point during breakfast (before the recorder was turned on), you'd mentioned something about making your time count in terms of watching movies since your daughter was born. Whereas the goal (pre-baby) was to watch as many films as you could, now you're more selective and turn off films that you've figured out early on in the watching. You said you wanted to talk more about that once we started recording, but I never got a chance to follow up. So please feel free to elaborate...
PO: For the longest time, my life was a small adjunct to my constant movie-watching. I treated movies the way an alcoholic treats booze, a drug addict treats drugs. You get the idea. I love wine and whiskey, but I want them to complement and enhance a lived life, and not act as some sort of sealed-off, observation post through which I view a small slice of existence and experience. I’ve reached the point where I know I’ll never see every film, and that I don’t actually have to, which, on some subconscious level, I truly believed I had to. I only saw 17 films in a theater this year, but I experienced each of them on such a deeper level, and they meant way more to me than the 200+ movies I saw in 1996.
Having said that, maybe it was my years of being at The New Beverly every night which enables me to experience movies that way I do. I’d hate to think anything was wasted time.
Capone: As far as I can tell, the great Neill Cumpston's last review for Ain't It Cool News was for CLOVERFIELD. I'm wondering if there was anything you saw in 2009 that gave you the itch to sit in front of your keyboard and channel Mr. Cumpston once again. You seem to have a fondness for PRECIOUS...
PO: Ha ha. The most Neill Cumpston-y movie I saw this year was CRANK 2. Oh, and maybe KNOWING. I was actually thinking of doing a Cumpston overview of the Oscar screeners I got. But this past year, the concept of a “guilty pleasure” finally left me, and I kind of folded the Neill character into my own writing. As sophomoric as he was, he was often a better writer than me when I’m trying to “write good.” That whole instinct thing, you know? Splashing your fingers on the keyboard and letting the lizard brain take the plot for awhile. On many levels, that’s how we--or, at least, I--experience our most beloved entertainments. I wrote reviews of PUNISHER: WAR ZONE and CRANK 2 on my Myspace blog that were just as un-hinged as when I slipped into the “Neill” character. It was a fun exercise, and it helped my writing, but I didn’t want to beat it into the ground, huh?
Capone: What films most impressed/depressed you in 2009 and why?
PO: Let’s just do Most Impressed, since I hate trashing bad movies. I guess that’s because I’ve been in enough movies to know that even the worst movie often has a lot of passion, sweat and labor behind it, and often times all of that work gets laid on a roulette table and a wheel is spun.
I was most impressed with ADVENTURELAND. Flat-out, it’s going to be the new DAZED AND CONFUSED and OFFICE SPACE. I don’t know why or how the studio fumbled the selling of that nearly perfect movie, but there you go. It’s the roulette wheel, sweeping away all the terrific elements that made up this flick. Kristen Stewart is a lost summer personified. The silent look between Jesse Eisenberg and Jack Gilpin once the liquor flask has been found. Ryan Reynolds fumbling Lou Reed song titles. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, batting cleanup. Martin Starr’s monologue in his sad backyard--one of the best pieces of acting I saw this year. And he delivers it through the fog and wreckage of Paige Howard’s gentle but ultimately hateful rejection of him. Matt Bush as Tommy Frigo and his One Stupid Joke. And, above all, Margarita Levieva as goddamn Lisa P., the summer crush you look back and can’t believe you had. Man, what a terrific movie.
And let’s just skip over my most disappointing movie. It had too many of my friends in it.
-- Capone
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